These moves always blow my mind. Of course, the game still exists in some forms, but to know you're going to eventually have to stop selling one of your mainline entries by adding a guest character kinda sucks.
I think a large part of the issue here is that the PC version was released as the complete version including all DLC (someone can correct me if I'm wrong, that's how I remember it anyway). With the other versions there is at least a fallback of the base version.
Weirdly the DLC that includes Freddy still appears to be available on the PlayStation Store (at least in Europe). That could be due to different amounts of time needed for platform holders to delist, though.
So..MKX, MK11 and Injustice 2 wil share the same fate at some point.
The complete editions of them probably will, yes.
Seems like the contracts for the inclusion need to be better.
Potentially yes, but it seems that the difficulty here was a change of ownership of IP. No matter how good a contract is, it's going to struggle to cover that scenario, since a new IP owner isn't bound by contracts that they didn't sign.
Can't they just remove the character, and make him unplayable online for existing owners?
It's probably pretty easy to remove him. Whether it's worth it to maintain the ongoing sales levels would be another question.
Removing him from online play for existing owners would be legally dubious though. The people who can now play as Freddy bought the rights to do so.
Why would WB not tell fans ahead of time and maybe do a sale before it was delisted? Played MK9 on console mostly but wouldn't have minded to have a copy of the PC version.
Answered earlier already, but this doesn't look like it was a matter of an expiring contract where they knew in advance when they could stop selling the character. It looks like they decided that they were already in a position where they couldn't sell the game containing the character, so immediate delisting was the only legally sound move. If every sale of the game is illegal (or legally dubious) then they definitely couldn't encourage
more sales.
bloody-disgusting.com
